Take the Dysprosium pill.

Dysprosium is a desert level 3 biotica that, frankly, I found the strongest (and very simple) combos with. I will try to stay humble in describing this, because I don't want the devs to nerf this, but in all honesty, it gets ridiculous.

And once you see the light and believe you have reached the peak of madness, you will then remember that Oil (Offshore) is also in the game, and there will be no going back to playing this game normally.

If you don't want to be spoiled, and you want to figure this out yourself without reading the guide, I'll just point out three cards for you: Mudcrack, Dysprosium and Oil (Offshore).

Introduction to Dysprosium

Dysprosium is, like I said, a level 3 Desert biotica. You get +50 Science and +5 Mystery for EACH biotica that is tagged 'Element' in your biome. These do not have to be distinct, which is crucial to this strategy. You also get a +50% Science bonus to all Metals ON THE PLANET, which seems to apply to other dysprosiums you place down too. The more dysprosiums you are able to place, the more of those bonuses will apply, not just to your dysprosiums, but every other metal with science you place down.

What you get together with Dysprosium when you draft it is Basalt, Iron and Enargite, all conveniently Element tagged biotica. But what those 3 elements that you get do, is not really important in this strategy. Their contributions will be negligible in comparison, but you should place them down if it's convenient so that you get more biodiversity and distinct elements at the same time.

For this strategy, I recommend using the Miner, as he gives EVERY mineral +5 science and +1 gold for each DISTINCT Element within borders, and you will place down a few of those out of convenience and to boost biodiversity. But, the Miner is not necessary at all. You can do this strategy with any of the main spirits, and the final yields you get will not be too different, but Miner is the slightly strongest.

You will want to place down as many element biotica in your biome as you can. In fact, I never place down anything other than Element minerals and Dysprosium in a Desert for this strategy. What's especially great about Dysprosium is the Mystery bonus, which is likely to make up for whatever your biome will lack for your city based on what their leader wants. Example: Sure, you will have a lot of Science, but your projects in the city demand wealth or food. Well, in that case, the leader is likely to be a food or wealth based one that has a Mystery passive that gives food/wealth for each Mystery. You might think at first that this is too weak to compensate, but Dysprosium "Aura" passive will trigger so many times that you will get nearly a hundred mystery, trivialising most of the projects, even if they're not science based ones.

To place down a Dysprosium, you will need 8 biodiversity in the biome for the first one, and 11 biodiversity for subsequent Dysprosiums. If you have a lot of elements in your biome, your first dysprosium can already net you over a thousand science. But it's when you place down the second dysprosium that your city will start easily reaching 100 Technology.

If I had to guess where Devs may nerf Dysprosium, they'll likely bump up that 11 cost to something higher, but I still hope that, instead, they will buff other biotica in subtle ways to allow for combos comparatively broken to this. Discovering broken strats like this is the fun of Reus after all.

Draft and spam Mudcrack

The Element of choice for this strategy is easily Mudcrack. If you are able to get Mudcrack before you get Dysprosium, and you spam it in your biome, you will get +1 biodiversity for each Mudcrack, so long as it's adjacent to another Mudcrack. This is because Mudcracks themselves count as empty slots. Simply put, even in the worst case scenario, you will be able to place down a new Dysprosium once after every 11 mudcracks. But in reality, you will be able to place them down sooner, because you will ideally also place down a couple of unique level 2 or 3 biotica that you have, that further increase biodiversity.

To get the first 2 dysprosium in the biome, you only need to get up to 8 biodiversity for the first one, which, when placed, will yield 3 biodiversity because it's unique in the biome, and then you need only another further 8 to place down the second one. 16 biodiversity from elements is easy if you use all elements you have and spam mudcrack the rest of the way, but you can also of course place down plants and animals if they are rank 2 biotica or higher, because then they will yield more biodiversity than a single mudcrack would.

You can draft Mudcrack from the following cards, and you are quite likely to get it as your very first draft in Desert if you look for it:



You can also get it from rank 2 biotica drafts (but not rank 3 drafts, you would have to reroll until you see rank 2 or lower drafts again):







Once you have your Mudcrack, the only other thing you're looking for is Dysprosium. Reroll for it at rank 3 drafts until you get it, save your rerolls for this moment ideally. If you have Mudcrack but can't get Dysprosium yet because you're in Era 2, just take something that has easy to place biotica, perhaps element ones, just for biodiversity's sake.

You will also want to save rerolls for Oil (Offshore), but that's an optional extension of this already powerful strategy.

Placements and how truly busted this gets

Allow me to write down a little story and example of how this plays out in game. I like to start with a complete desert, and add the ocean for oil later depending on where it fits best. But, again, oil is completely unnecessary here. You will get busted results with just Mudcrack and Dysprosium alone.



You will want to play the game relatively as normal, draft Desert primarily and Ocean secondarily. Other drafts should be used to pick cards that offer a biotica that can go into desert as well, but they're not necessary.

When picking inspirations/projects, prefer Blast Furnace or Power Plant. Blast Furnace is easily the best, as Dysprosiums count as Metals.



Eventually, once you get to Era 3, and you have drafted your Mudcrack and Dysprosium, all that's left to do is commit the deed. Place as many mudcracks and other biotica to get your biodiversity high enough to place down your first, then, your second dysprosium. The total yields will depend on how how many elements you've fit into your biome, but with two dysprosiums you should already get way more science than you will ever need.


Bam. As shrimple as that.



While it's counting, let me talk about the other cities.

I then placed one dysprosium each for the other two cities, yielding the following stats eventually:




Notice how the Huntress has a lot of food. Much of it comes from the Mystery that Dysprosium provides, allowing her to get close to finishing her level 4 project entirely off of that one Dysprosium.



Still counting...


You can just sit back and watch the numbers go up.



The yields get absolutely insane.




You will see just how much of the heavy lifting is done by the Blast Furnace.


Over 350 Tech in the main city, after it's finally done counting.



But, as it turns out, for best prosperity on planet, it's most beneficial to put all of the Dysprosiums you can fit into Miner's city, because he's likely to have the Blast Furnace project:



That's right. 655 whopping Technology. In one city. 1100 Prosperity on planet overall. Speaks for itself. You would only need 19 planets like this to get the 20000 prosperity in universe achievement, which I'm not sure if demonstrates how broken this is, or how absurd that achievement is.

When I first found this combo, I thought getting 100 Technology is insane. 655? ...

And then you remember... Oil (Offshore)

+1 Gold from each Science in adjacent biotica.

If you're curious how I got so much wealth in the last section, you may have noticed that placed down Oil (Offshore) in the coast.

Well, here are its yields, due to it being placed to next two dysprosiums:



Need I say more?

This is all before you even use Micros and buy more Eon points!!!

All of these yields that you see, I didn't use any Micros for. I bought 2 planet expanders, and I bought one terraform charge for a mountain. That's it! I didn''t place any Micros anywhere, and there are micros that can do +50% gold yield, or +50% science yield if I recall correctly. Imagine how much higher the yields can go from here.




Here's the final score and planet before I put 4 dysprosiums into one city, proving this was done on Giant difficulty:

Closing remarks

I truly hope devs don't nerf this to the ground. It's the strongest thing I found in Reus, but I think a better game design philosophy is to nerf this a little, and buff other biotica's synergies to allow for some kind of interaction like this with at least one other biotica, even if it's from other biomes. There perhaps are many of these hidden in the game for me to find.

The one similarly strong other strat I found that I really like is to create one giant planet-spanding Taiga biome, and place two Brown Bears into it, with Huntress as the main spirit. They can yield, together, easily 3k gold and 6k food (huntress bonus +100% if there's exactly 2 bears), and the bonus goes higher if you can make the biome more rugged. There's a secret to that strategy, to get the biodiversity and ruggednes both high enough for this, and finding the biotica that do that best is really fun.

I hope this guide was enlightening for you, potentially for the devs as well (who may be fully aware and hopefully don't mind), and that in your next Reus 2 run, you will take the Dysprosium pill, and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.


Thanks for reading.

[HelloKumusta]

is there a similar strat to this? since this is already been nerf

[Misa Cza]

damn i just read through the discussion - disprosium used to be *per each* and not *per each distinct*!?
now i understand why the guide got made.
i missed out.

[Misa Cza]

Have you looked into getting harmony pilled? I played a chill game to get the uneventfull era badges and accidentally ended up with 1600 era points; 503 are from tech, with a 21k tech from foxglove.
I wasnt even speciffically focusing on the harmony combo or science (as you can tell from points)

harmony is very engaging to combo as well.

i do love this game. <3

ps: this was on giant difficulty with unlimited rerolls

[Crandria]

Even with the nerf this strat still helped me get the 3 star space age achievement. Thanks!

[DanUrsus]

That's not bad, I myself am currently looking into Pomegranate and Mudcrack as a replacement for Desert strat. It plays very similar, but doesn't yield such insane resources as Dysprosium did.

There's also Emerald + Panda, but that requires very careful placements of other biotica. Still, it's probably the strongest thing I know now.

[greensniperhat]

Proof: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198101687478/screenshot/2520408817771647345/

[greensniperhat]

It seems like with careful planning (and diversity), you can do a Palladium run - even though it's not as broken as Dysprosium. Just snagged 2800+ science with a single Palladium.

[greensniperhat]

Welp, a golden age has ended

[DanUrsus]

now that's just cringe. nerfed to the ground.

[sketch219]

nerfed already. Now its each distinct element bioticum